THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH 

BY 

JOHN  McNAUGHER 

V 

Professor  of 

New  Testament  Literature  and  Exegesis 
In  The  Pittsburgh  Theodogioau  Seminary 


A  paper  read  before  the  United  Presbyterian 
Ministerial  Association  of  Pittsburgh,  Pa. 

Published  by  request 


UNITED  Presbyterian  Board  of  Publication 

PITTSBURGH 
19  2  3 


I' 


Copyrighted,  1923,  by 

The  United  Presbyterian  Board  of  Publication 
Pittsburgh,  Pa. 


Af*R  ' i‘  ji. 


The  Virgin  Birth 


HE  DOCTRINE  of  the  Virgin  Birth 
is  that  Jesus  was  born  of  the  Maid 
Mary,  without  the  agency  of  a 
father,  by  the  creative  energy  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  For  years  back  this  has  been 
one  of  the  points  of  fire  in  theological  discus¬ 
sion.  The  historico-critical  school,  with  its 
repudiation  of  the  supernatural  in  the  life  of 
our  Lord,  with  its  revamped  Christianity 
purged  of  miracle  and  mystery,  has  thrown 
this  article  of  the  Church’s  testimony  into 
the  limbo  of  things  abandoned.  In  addition 
to  naturalistic  writers,  there  are  those  who 
in  a  diluted  sense  accept  the  Incarnation  and 
yet  dismiss  offhand  as  untenable  the  mirac¬ 
ulous  conception  of  Jesus  and  wish  to  have 
it  deleted  from  the  Creed.  And  there  are 
men  holding  to  a  still  more  orthodox  Chris- 
tology  who  treat  this  subject  with  gingerly 
discretion  or  refer  to  it  in  language  of  doubt. 
Both  of  these  last-mentioned  classes  esteem 
•  the  unique  mode  by  which  Jesus  is  reported 
to  have  begun  His  bodily  existence  as  unes¬ 
sential  to  faith.  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  spoke 
for  them  when  he  declared  the  question  to 
be  “of  no  serious  importance.”  Manifestly 


4 


The  Virgin  Birth 


the  Virgin  Birth  is  among  those  Christian 
facts  over  which,  in  this  day  of  dragging 
anchors,  of  drift  from  ancient  moorings,  we 
must  maintain  an  unremitting  guard.  Be¬ 
cause  it  is  beyond  the  horizon  of  biology  and 
modern  materialism,  and  at  the  same  time  is 
alleged  to  lack  credible  evidence,  it  is  freely 
given  up  to  denial  or  listed  as  insecure. 

The  argument  against  the  authenticity  of 
the  Virgin  Birth  has  been  so  built  up  that  at 
first  blush  it  looks  formidable.  The  narra¬ 
tive  is  found  in  the  introductory  chapters  of 
two  only  of  our  Gospels,  the  First  and  Third. 
That  is  all ;  there  is  no  allusion  to  the  event 
elsewhere  in  the  New  Testament.  It  is 
ignored  by  the  Evangelists  Mark  and  John, 
Mark’s  silence  proving  that  it  was  not  in  the 
common  Synoptic  tradition.  It  had  no  place 
in  the  earliest  apostolic  preaching  as  pre¬ 
served  in  the  Book  of  Acts.  The  twenty-one 
Epistles  and  the  Apocalypse  betray  no  ac¬ 
quaintance  with  it.  Moreover,  the  accounts 
of  the  Wonder  Birth  in  Matthew  and  Luke 
are  divergent  to  the  degree  that  they  are 
irreconcilable,  and  within  each  of  these  twc» 
Gospels  the  story  after  it  is  once  told  has  nci 
later  echoes  of  any  kind.  Jesus  Himself 
never  intimated  that  He  was  not  born 
naturally,  and  in  the  Gospels,  those  of  th^' 


The  Virgin  Birth 


5 


Infancy  included,  there  are  clear  inconsisten¬ 
cies  with  the  Virgin  Birth :  Joseph  and  Mary 
are  made  the  parents  of  Jesus  and  He  is 
called  the  son  of  Joseph;  the  genealogies  rep¬ 
resent  Jesus  as  a  literal  blood-descendant  of 
David  through  Joseph;  Mary  gives  Jesus  a 
motherly  scolding  at  His  first  visit  to  the 
Temple  and  later  is  ready  to  believe  Him 
mentally  unhinged — actions  incompatible 
with  any  such  memory  as  that  of  her  Son’s 
extraordinary  birth.  All  these  considerations 
demonstrate,  we  are  told,  that  the  Virgin 
Birth  is  a  fiction,  traceable  in  suggestion  to 
this  quarter  or  that.  Those  who  framed  the 
fabulous  story  were  persuaded  that  what 
they  were  writing  was  substantially  true. 
The  Supernatural  Conception  was  an  easy  in¬ 
ference  from  Isaiah’s  Immanuel  prophecy,  or 
it  had  its  footing  in  the  old-time  mytholog¬ 
ical  tales  where  persons  of  distinction  were 
begotten  by  the  gods  in  intercourse  with 
mortal  women.  Thinking  of  the  unexampled 
personality  of  Jesus  and  the  stupendous 
issues  of  His  life  and  teaching,  there  were 
certain  in  the  primitive  Christian  community 
who  were  led  to  postulate  for  Him  an  origin 
in  keeping  therewith.  Their  fabrication  in 
its  twofold  form  was  either  incorporated  by 
the  Evangelists  Matthew  and  Luke  in  their 
respective  Gospels  or  interpolated  at  a  sub- 


6 


The  Virgin  Birth 


sequent  date  in  correspondence  with  a  grow¬ 
ing  demand  for  the  edification  of  the  man 
Jesus. 

By  such  reasoning  the  Virgin  Birth  is 
brushed  aside.  Two  alternatives  remain: 
Jesus  was  born  of  Joseph  and  Mary  in  law¬ 
ful  wedlock  or  He  was  an  illegitimate.  The 
former  of  these  has  been  the  common  view 
among  those  rejecting  the  Virgin  Birth.  To¬ 
day  it  is  held  by  the  majority  of  Jews,  by 
Unitarians,  and  by  liberal  Christians  who 
have  quit  the  evangelical  faith.  The  second 
of  the  alternates,  however,  has  been  shame¬ 
lessly  advocated.  This  abhorrent  caricature 
of  the  Virgin  Birth  was  invented  by  the  Jews 
back  in  the  second  century  for  polemical  pur¬ 
poses,  owing  to  the  difficulties  which  they 
felt  in  opposing  the  Davidic  descent  of  Jesus 
as  claimed  by  the  Church.  At  that  time  and  • 
afterwards  it  was  industriously  circulated  in 
the  synagogues,  and  it  appears  in  the  Tal¬ 
mudic  literature.  In  this  blasphemy  the  ca¬ 
nonical  Infancy  story  was  followed  so  far 
that  Joseph’s  non-paternity  was  granted ;  but 
then  it  was  said  that  Mary  became  pregnant 
by  a  seducer,  one  Panthera,  a  Roman  mili¬ 
tary  officer.  The  name  Panthera  was  prob¬ 
ably  a  studied  distortion  of  parthenos, 
‘maiden.’  This  foul  Jewish  aspersion  on  the 


The  Virgin  Birth 


7 


virgin-motherhood  of  Mary  was  taken  up  by 
Celsus,  a  pagan  philosopher  of  the  second 
century.  The  older  rationalism  fell  in  v 
eagerly  with  it,  and  it  still  survives  in  the 
coarser  ranks  of  modern  infidelity.  Voltaire 
voiced  it  with  scurrilous  indecency.  Tolstoi, 
in  his  volume  The  Four  Gospels,  repeats  it, 
speaking  of  “the  disgraceful  birth  of  Jesus.” 
And  recently  it  has  been  blazoned  abroad 
through  the  notorious  outpourings  of  Prof. 
Haeckel,  the  German  biologist,  in  The  Riddle 
of  the  Universe.  This  vulgar  calumny  not 
only  shocks  religious  feeling  but  challenges 
every  just  notion  of  the  overruling  provi¬ 
dence  of  God.  Can  we  refer  the  moral 
and  spiritual  renewal  of  the  world  to  one 
born  in  sin?  Jesus,  with  His  Divine  traits; 
Jesus,  the  central  figure  in  the  everlasting 
gospel;  Jesus,  Whose  significance  is  as  racial 
as  the  hunger  for  God  and  righteousness; 
Jesus,  humanity’s  lone  hope;  Jesus,  Who 
crowns  life  with  its  best  blessings — is  His 
birth  to  be  dragged  through  the  mire  of  law¬ 
less  lust?  Was  He  the  bastard  son  of  an 
unchaste  mother?  Perish  the  thought.  Such 
a  monstrous  anomaly  is  simply  impossible. 
Dismissing  this  ugly  profanity,  there  re¬ 
mains  the  claim  of  destructive  criticism  that 
our  Lord’s  Virgin  Birth  is  the  pious  inven¬ 
tion  of  early  Christian  imagination,  that  He 


8 


The  Virgin  Birth 


was  born  in  the  normal  way,  His  parents 
being  Joseph  and  Mary. 

What  shall  we  say  to  these  things?  The 
stubborn  outstanding  fact  is  that  two  of  our 
Gospels,  the  only  two  that  deal  with  the  birth 
of  Jesus,  contain  the  testimony  that  He  was 
born  of  the  Virgin  Mary  by  the  direct  action 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  These  strikingly  inde¬ 
pendent  narratives  in  Matthew  and  Luke  are 
the  sole  account  of  the  Nativity  of  Jesus  that 
we  have,  and  they  agree  in  declaring  that 
the  “body  prepared  for  Him”  was  conceived 
miraculously.  If  they  are  not  believable,  we 
know  nothing  at  all  of  the  circumstances  of 
our  Lord’s  birth.  The  issue,  therefore,  nar¬ 
rows  itself  to  the  credibility  of  these  records. 
Are  they  trustworthy  ?  The  genuineness  and 
authenticity  of  the  two  Gospels  in  general 
are  assumed  without  argument.  But  what 
of  the  Infancy  narratives?  Were  they  in  the 
original  edition  of  these  Gospels,  or  are  they 
later  alien  insertions?  The  answer  is  that 
they  are  present  in  all  the  manuscripts, 
uncial  and  cursive,  and  in  all  the  ancient  ver¬ 
sions.  Not  a  single  early  writer  gives  us 
ground  for  thinking  that  these  two  Gospels 
as  he  had  them  differed  from  those  in  our 
Bibles — except,  indeed,  the  heretic  Marcion, 
who  mutilated  the  Gospel  of  Luke  to  make 


The  Virgin  Birth 


9 


it  fit  his  crooked  ideas  about  the  Person  of 
Christ. 

Internal  evidence  reinforces  the  documen¬ 
tary.  Prof.  Schmiedel  and  others  allege 
cleavage  between  the  Joseph  genealogy  in 
Matthew  and  the  Birth  story  which  follows ; 
but  the  two  hang  together  perfectly.  Not¬ 
withstanding  the  Divine  conception  of  Jesus, 
He  was  the  reputed  and  acknowledged  son 
of  Joseph,  and  from  a  Jewish  standpoint 
Joseph’s  lineage  was  the  only  way  for  Jesus 
to  have  a  legal  genealogy.  Besides,  the  use 
of  the  genealogy  may  have  had  an  apolo¬ 
getic  motive.  In  the  introduction  of  the  three 
women,  Tamar,  Rahab,  and  Bathsheba 
(Ruth,  while  pure,  was  a  heathen),  the 
Evangelist  may  have  aimed  at  silencing  any 
possible  insinuation  against  the  honor  of 
Mary.  Even  in  the  Davidic  genealogy  women 
of  stained  life  played  a  role,  while  Mary’s 
character,  as  is  made  plain,  was  unimpeach¬ 
able.  How,  then,  were  slanderous  flings  at 
her  and  Jesus  in  Jewish  circles  justified? 
With  a  royal  house  having  such  a  soiled  his¬ 
tory,  Jews  could  not  afford  to  throw  stones 
at  Christians.  From  both  of  the  foregoing 
points  of  view  the  genealogy  in  Matthew  is  a 
proper  prelude  to  the  Birth-Narrative.  With 
regard  to  the  opening  chapters  in  Luke,  it 


10 


The  Virgin  Birth 


has  been  shown  by  eminent  New  Testament 
authorities  that,  while  their  contents  are 
strongly  Hebraic,  and  reveal  early  sources  of 
knowledge,  they  are  the  work  of  Luke  and 
are  of  a  literary  piece  with  the  rest  of  his 
Gospel. 

In  the  effort  to  condemn  these  two  ac¬ 
counts  as-  interpolations  a  perverse  hyper¬ 
criticism  asserts  that  they  are  marked  by 
mutual  inconsistencies  which  cannot  be  har¬ 
monized.  So  testifies  Prof.  Usener  in  The 
Encyclopaedia  Biblica.  It  is  true  that  they 
are  independent  and  are  developed  along  in¬ 
dividual  lines.  They  come  from  men  of  very 
different  habits  and  temperaments  and  with 
differing  intentions.  Matthew's  report  is 
from  the  standpoint  of  Joseph  because  of 
the  theocratic  emphasis  in  his  Gospel,  be¬ 
cause  he  would  convince  the  Jews  that  Jesus 
was  the  promised  Messiah.  Luke,  who  wrote 
for  the  Gentile  world,  and  who  had  the  in¬ 
stinct  of  a  practicing  physician,  selected  the 
story  of  the  Nativity  as  it  came  from  Mary, 
and  gives  the  actual  genealogy  of  Jesus 
through  His  mother.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all 
this,  the  two  accounts  supplement  each  other, 
and  their  variations  involve  no  discrepancies. 
Dr.  Oscar  Holtzmann,  an  advanced  critic,  in 
his  recent  Life  of  Jesus,  says :  ‘‘A  contradic- 


The  Virgin  Birth 


11 


tion  between  these  narratives  of  Matthew 
and  Luke  does  not  exist/’  Dr.  James  Orr 
sums  up  no  less  than  twelve  points  in  which 
they  coincide,  and  demonstrates  that  no 
statement  in  either  is  negatived  by  a  fair 
reading  of  the  other.  Bishop  Westcott 
declares  that  “the  separate  details  are 
exactly  capable  of  harmonious  adjustment.” 
We  turn  the  tables,  therefore,  on  those  who 
with  gross  prejudice  have  taxed  these  Gos¬ 
pels  with  being  mutually  exclusive.  The 
Birth  story  is  written  as  we  should  most 
have  wished  to  have  it — from  the  respective 
viewpoints  of  Joseph  and  of  Mary,  and  the 
two  narratives,  being  manifestly  distinct, 
doubly  attest  the  supernatural  birth  of 
Jesus. 

While  admitting  Luke’s  Infancy  sketch  as 
a  whole,  there  are  those  who  take  exception 
to  verses  34  and  35  of  the  first  chapter,  the 
verses  in  which  the  Virgin  Birth  is  stated. 
The  omission  of  these  words  is  urged  on  the 
ground  that  they  break  the  connection,  which 
otherwise  would  run  smoothly.  This  we 
answer  with  a  decided  -negative.  These 
verses  dovetail  perfectly  into  the  context 
both  before  and  after.  Luke’s  entire  story 
is  underlaid  with  the  idea  that  when  Christ 
was  born  His  mother  was  a  virgin.  Joseph 


12 


The  Virgin  Birth 


plays  not  the  smallest  part  in  the  mystery  of 
Jesus;  Mary  is  in  the  foreground.  Further, 
the  context  is  to  the  effect  that  the  announce- 
m.ent  of  Gabriel  is  of  something  wonderful, 
and  the  advent  of  an  exceptional  personage 
IS  implied.  Some  critics  reject  the  thirty- 
fourth  verse  because  Mary's  question  ap¬ 
pears  out  of  place  under  her  circumstances 
as  one  looking  forward  to  marriage.  Why, 
since  she  was  betrothed,  should  she  display 
astonishment  at  the  prospect  of  bearing  a 
son?  But  the  apparent  strangeness  of  her 
question  disappears  when  we  consider  the 
state  of  agitation  and  perplexity  which  the 
visit  and  the  tidings  of  the  angel  would 
naturally  produce.  She  seems,  too,  to  have 
imagined  an  immediate  fulfillment  of  the 
promise,  an  immediate  conception,  and  this, 
in  her  present  maiden  condition,  she  could 
not  understand.  It  may  be  added  that  in  a 
concocted  story  Mary's  rejoinder  to  the  angel 
would  have  avoided  this  surface  difficulty. 
As  it  stands,  the  artlessness  of  her  question 
is  a  proof  of  truthfulness,  is  a  fact  in  which 
truth  completes  itself.  Aside  from  contex¬ 
tual  justification,  it  is  very  improbable  that 
an  early  redactor  of  the  Third  Gospel,  setting 
out  to  exploit  the  figment  of  the  Virgin  Birth 
by  interpolation,  would  have  put  such  a  re- 


The  Virgin  Birth 


13 


straint  on  his  inventive  genius  as  to  content 
himself  with  two  lone  verses. 

Then  for  this  hypothesis  there  is  no  manu¬ 
script  basis.  These  verses  are  retained  as 
indubitably  genuine  by  the  most  distin¬ 
guished  editors  of  the  Greek  New  Testament, 
both  in  England  and  Germany.  Verse  34  is 
omitted  in  one  codex  of  the  Latin  version, 
but  that  arises  apparently  from  a  confusion 
of  the  text,  and  anyhow  no  canon  of  textual 
science  would  warrant  the  rejection  of  a  pas¬ 
sage  on  such  beggarly  authority.  As  for 
verse  35,  not  only  is  there  no  evidence  for  its 
omission,  but  it  is  one  of  the  earliest  sup¬ 
ported  verses  in  the  New  Testament,  being 
quoted  by  Justin  Martyr.  It  is  plain,  there¬ 
fore,  that  the  criticism  which  adjudges  these 
verses  to  be  interpolated  is  purely  subjective 
and  arbitrary.  If  passages  are  to  be  ex¬ 
punged  after  that  fashion,  the  method  might 
be  followed  until  little  of  the  Gospel  narra¬ 
tives  would  remain.  Were  the  upholders  of 
orthodox  doctrine  to  indulge  in  such  capri¬ 
cious  text  emendation,  they  would  be  laughed 
to  scorn;  and  we  have  an  equal  right  to  be 
contemptuous.  There  are  fixed  rules  of 
evidence  and  established  principles  of  textual 
criticism,  and  it  is  not  legitimate  to  ignore 
these  rules  and  play  fast  and  loose  with  these 


14 


The  Virgin  Birth 


principles,  even  for  the  sake  of  dislodging  an 
article  of  the  Christian  creed.  Anent  the  in¬ 
terpolation  resort,  it  is  apropos  to  cite 
Augustine.  In  one  of  his  vigorous  metaphors 
he  describes  the  plea  of  interpolation  as  “the 
Jast  gasp  of  a  heretic  in  the  grip  of  truth.” 

We  have  seen  that  the  narratives  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  belong  to  the  original  text  of 
Matthew  and  Luke,  that  they  were  not  in¬ 
terpolated  by  later  hands.  Let  us  now  weigh 
the  claim  that,  embedded  as  they  are  in  these 
Gospels,  they  are  yet  of  mythical  character. 
-Through  reflection  on  the  pre-eminent  Christ 
there  sprang  up  in  the  early  Christian  circle 
the  thought  of  a  birth  in  keeping  with  His 
exalted  person  and  mission,  and  this  crystal¬ 
lized  into  the  romantic  stories  found  in 
Matthew  and  Luke.  These  stories  are  mod¬ 
eled  on  the  wonder  births  of  heroes  and  great 
men  common  in  the  folk-lore  of  Babylonia, 
Greece,  and  India,  or  else  they  had  their 
starting-point  in  Isaiah's  Immanuel  passage 
or  in  other  suggestive  Scripture  sources.  It 
is  significant  that  there  are  thirteen  or  four¬ 
teen  theories  of  this  kind,  and  that  most  of 
these  varieties  collide  with  one  another ;  their 
authors  are  at  loggerheads. 

Turning  to  the  birth-myths  of  heathenism, 
such  as  are  given  in  Prof.  Rhys  Davids' 


The  Virgin  Birth 


15 


Buddhist  Birth  Stories,  their  existence  is  in 
itself  no  argument  against  the  solid  histor¬ 
icity  of  the  miraculous  birth  of  Jesus.  Rather 
might  it  be  contended  that  in  these  legendary 
tales,  as  in  heathen  forecasts  of  the  incarna¬ 
tion,  atonement,  and  resurrection  of  a 
Saviour,  the  ethnic  world  was  dreaming  of 
great  things  yet  to  be,  was  voicing  its  dim 
prevision  of  what  was  realized  at  Nazareth 
and  Bethlehem. 

As  against  pagan  birth-myths  having  any 
source-relation  to  the  Gospel  stories,  it  is 
abundantly  evident  that  the  narratives  of  the 
Nativity  are  Jewish-Christian  through  and 
through.  Dr.  Bacon,  of  Yale,  says:  “The 
basal  fact  for  every  student  of  these  chap¬ 
ters  of  Matthew  and  Luke  is  that  they  are 
Hebrew  to  the  core.  This  is  simply  fatal 
to  all  comparison  with  heathen  mythology.'' 
Dr.  Harnack,  while  he  counts  the  Virgin 
Birth  legendary,  also  knocks  its  pagan  de¬ 
rivation  in  the  head:  “Nothing  that  is 
mythological  in  the  sense  of  Greek  or  Ori¬ 
ental  myth  is  to  be  found  in  these  accounts ; 
all  here  is  in  the  spirit  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  most  of  it  reads  like  a  passage  from  the 
historical  books  of  that  ancient  volume."  Be¬ 
sides  this  consideration,  there  are  no  real 
coincidences  between  these  Gentile  myths 


16 


The  Virgin  Birth 


and  the  narratives  of  the  Virgin  Birth.  It 
IS  only  by  verbal  jugglery  that  parallels  are 
effected.  The  celestial  descent  ascribed  to 
heroes  usually  involves  the  amours  of  the 
gods.  There  has  never  been  adduced  an 
example  of  birth  from  a  pure  virgin.  Even 
radical  critics  are  forced  to  grant  that  pagan 
ideas,  if  adopted  by  the  Evangelists,  were 
changed  out  oj  all  recognition.  Then  those 
who  theorize  that  the  Gospel  birth-stories 
were  inspired  by  heathen  analogies  forget 
that  the  sentiment  of  Jewish  Christians  re¬ 
garding  polytheistic  paganism,  and  especial¬ 
ly  pagan  birth  mythology  with  its  glorifying 
of  sensual  desire,  can  only  have  been  that  of 
the  deepest  abhorrence.  That  any  members 
of  the  primitive  Christian  community  would 
turn  in  that  direction  to  derive  therefrom  the 
story  of  the  birth  of  their  holy  Redeemer  is 
inconceivable. 

Contending  that  the  Virgin  Birth  is  not  a 
loan  from  paganism,  there  are  those  who 
rate  it  a  legend  traceable  to  the  famous  Im¬ 
manuel  oracle  in  Isaiah  (vii.  14).  This  is 
Dr.  Harnack’s  guess.  The  Isaianic  prophecy 
IS  the  germ-cell  of  which  our  Infancy  stories 
are  the  concrete  outgrowths.  Some  Jewish- 
Christians  found  in  that  prophecy  a  pro¬ 
ductive  hint  that  eventuated  in  two  imagi- 


The  Virgin  Birth 


17 


nary  accounts  of  the  origin  of  Christ's  earth¬ 
ly  existence.  But  as  against  all  who  thus 
reason,  there  is  not  a  shred  of  proof  that  up 
to  the  writing  of  Matthew's  Gospel  the  pas¬ 
sage  in  question  was  ever  interpreted  by  the 
Jews  in  a  Messianic  sense,  or  that  it  was 
viewed  as  teaching  the  virgin  birth  of  any¬ 
one.  In  harmony  with  this,  it  is  entirely  in 
keeping  with  the  method  of  the  first  Evan¬ 
gelist  that,  when  once  he  had  come  to  know 
that  the  Messiah  had  been  born  of  a  virgin 
mother,  he  should  have  discovered  in  that 
arresting  fact  the  ultimate  fulfilment  of 
Isaiah's  prophecy.  Thus  it  was  the  actual 
event  of  the  Virgin  Birth  that  illumined  the 
prophecy,  not  the  prophecy  that  suggested 
the  fabrication  of  the  Virgin  Birth.  In  addi¬ 
tion,  there  seems  to  have  been  no  Jewish  ex¬ 
pectation  that  the  Messiah's  birth  would  be 
abnormal.  Birth  from  a  virgin  mother  would 
have  been  opposite  to  Hebrew  ideas,  for 
Israel  held  marriage  in  special  honor  as  a 
Divine  institution. 

There  are  some  other  alleged  prolific 
sources  of  the  Christ  birth-myth  which  are 
barely  mentioned  here.  Dr.  J.  Estlin  Car¬ 
penter  and  Prof.  Lobstein  refer  us  to  Psalm 
ii.  7  (“This  day  have  I  begotten  Thee"),  to¬ 
gether  with  the  promise  of  Isaiah  xi.  3  re- 


18 


The  Virgin  Birth 


garding  the  fulness  of  the  Spirit  that  should 
rest  on  the  Messiah.  Dr.  Pfleiderer  seizes 
upon  the  Pauline  phrasings  “the  second  man 
IS  of  heaven^'  (I  Cor.  xv.  49)  and  “the  Son  of 
God  according  to  the  spirit  of  holiness” 
(Rom.  i.  4).  Dr.  Cheyne  cites  the  allegoric 
woman  in  childbirth  described  in  the  Apoc¬ 
alypse  (chap.-xii).  It  really  seems  as  i:^  no 
absurdities  are  too  great  to  be  pressed  into 
the  service  of  those  who  deny  what  is  writ¬ 
ten  about  our  Lord's  birth. 

As  pulverizing  the  doctrine  of  the  myth- 
mongers  in  any  of  its  forms,  direct  appeal 
may  be  made  to  the  two  Virgin  Birth  stories 
themselves.  The  impression  they  make  is 
anything  but  that  of  a  myth  or  legend.  The 
simplicity,  the  conciseness,  the  restraint,  the 
dignity,  the  exquisite  refinement,  the  pure 
and  beautiful  reticence  which  clothe  them 
are  a  far  remove  from  the  bizarre  and  often 
immoral  Babylonian,  or  Greek,  or  Hindu  nar¬ 
ratives  of  unusual  births.  There  is  the  same 
contrast  with  the  apocryphal  gospels  of  the 
Infancy,  with  their  petty  tattle,  their  indeli¬ 
cate  allusions,  and  their  ascetic  exaggera¬ 
tions.* 


•The  apocryphal  gospels  of  the  Infancy  are  The  Nativity  of 
Mary,  The  Pseudo-Matthew,  The  Arabic  Gospel  of  the  Infancy, 
The  Protevangelium  of  James,  The  Gospel  of  Thomas,  and  The 
History  of  Joseph. 


The  Virgin  Birth 


19 


Further,  the  assured  dating  of  our  Gos¬ 
pels  is  far  too  early  to  permit  mythical  in¬ 
vention,  especially  in  two  individual  forms. 
In  an  unprecedented  way  the  supposed  myth 
must  have  had  its  rise  and  acceptance  within 
thirty  or  forty  years  after  the  death  of 
Christ,  at  a  time  when  the  Virgin  herself 
may  have  been  still  living.  Moreover,  if  such 
a  fiction  had  been  in  process  of  development 
during  that  interval,  and  had  taken  root  in 
the  convictions  of  any  section  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  circle,  it  is  impossible  that  Paul  and 
the  other  apostles  should  not  have  heard  of 
it.  And  what  manner  of  men  were  they  who 
artfully  w^ove  a  garment  of  falsehood  about 
the  infant  Jesus  and  then  succeeded  in  foist¬ 
ing  their  concocted  tales  on  the  Church  so 
early  as  to  dominate  its  official  records? 

What,  too,  is  to  be  said  about  the  Evangel¬ 
ists  inserting  cunningly  devised  fables  in 
their  Gospels?  Were  Matthew  and  Luke  in¬ 
competent,  the  gullible  dupes  of  popular  de¬ 
lusion?  Take  Luke.  In  the  preface  to  his 
Gospel  he  states  that  he  writes  with  the  de¬ 
sign  of  convincing  his  readers  of  the  cer¬ 
tainty  of  the  things  he  recites,  and  he  dwells 
on  his  care  in  getting  full  and  precise  infor¬ 
mation.  He  avers  that  he  has  traced  the 
whole  series  of  events  “accurately  from  the 
first.”  With  his  professional  training  as  a 


20 


The  Virgin  Birth 


physician  he  would  not  believe  readily  in  a 
virginal  birth;  he  would  feel  almost  inevi¬ 
tably  a  repugnance  to  such  a  report  and 
would  be  rigidly  inquisitive  about  it  before 
he  gave  it  credence  as  a  factual  reality.  For 
these  reasons  it  is  hard  to  imagine  that  Luke, 
whose  accuracy  has  been  tested  severely  in 
recent  years,  and  not  found  wanting,  should 
have  admitted  into  his  Gospel  a  spurious  ac¬ 
count  of  so  momentous  an  occurrence  as  the 
human  birth  of  our  Lord.  The  likelihood  is 
that  he  obtained  the  facts  from  Mary  her¬ 
self,  either  directly  or  indirectly.  Sir  W.  M, 
Ramsay  argues  this  at  great  length,  and  Dr. 
Sanday  joins  him. 

To  dodge  the  difficulty  arising  from  the 
early  date  of  the  Gospels,  that  this  left  no 
time  for  creations  of  fancy  to  spring  up,  and 
the  other  difficulty  of  such  creations  passing 
muster  with  the  Evangelists,  the  view  has 
been  advocated  that  the  mythical  birth 
stories  were  later  than  the  Gospels  and  were 
stealthily  introduced  therein  at  some  period 
during  the  second  century.  This  makeshift 
IS  easily  exploded.  Besides  what  has  been 
said  already  in  disproof  of  interpolation,  how 
could  such  tinkering  with  two  of  the  canon¬ 
ical  Gospels  escape  detection  and  protest  in 
the  Sub-apostolic  Church,  a  Church  which,  as 


The  Virgin  Birth 


21 


we  shall  see,  classed  the  Virgin  Birth  among 
the  rudiments  of  the  faith? 

We  are  ready  now  for  a  summing  up  with 
reference  to  the  myth-theory  of  the  Virgin 
Birth.  It  is  just  a  complex  mass  of  bald 
assertions  and  far-fetched  identifications,  a 
baseless  and  preposterous  speculation,  with¬ 
out  a  leg  to  stand  upon.  The  supporters  of 
its  various  phases  pour  discomfiture  and  rout 
upon  one  another.  That  also  it  shuts  out  the 
barest  admission  of  the  guidance  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  in  the  framing  and  character  of  the 
Gospel  narrative  is  no  small  part  of  the  in¬ 
dictment  against  it. 

We  notice  next  a  variant  reading  in  Matt¬ 
hew  i.  16.  In  the  Sinaitic-Syriac,  a  copy  of 
the  old  Syriac  version  discovered  at  Sinai 
and  published  in  1894,  the  genealogy  in 
Matthew  is  concluded  with  the  following 
statement :  “Joseph,  to  whom  was  betrothed 
Mary  the  Virgin,  begat  Jesus,  Who  is  called 
the  Christ.''  This  isolated  reading  cannot  be 
taken  as  in  any  degree  weakening  the  evi¬ 
dence  of  the  manuscripts  and  other  versions. 
The  Syriac  was  translated  from  the  Greek, 
and  the  Greek  manuscripts  do  not  hint  at 
such  a  reading.  The  reading  falls  foul  of 
itself,  for  in  the  same  breath  in  which  it  says 
that  “Joseph  begat  Jesus"  it  speaks  of  “Mary 
the  Virgin."  Moreover,  the  Sinaitic-Syriae 


22 


The  Virgin  Birth 


contradicts  itself  by  retaining  verses  18-20 
in  the  same  chapter,  which  record  the  con¬ 
ception  of  Jesus  by  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the 
refusal  of  Joseph  to  keep  his  troth  with  Mary 
till  reassured  by  the  angel.  The  reading  is 
evidently  an  heretical  corruption  of  relative¬ 
ly  late  origin.  Some  scribe,  probably  an 
Ebionite  or  a  Cerinthian  Gnostic,  altered  the 
text  to  get  rid  of  the  supernatural  birth  and 
the  Deity  of  Jesus,  but  failed  to  touch  verses 
18-20.  The  variant  made  a  stir  when  first 
published,  but  it  has  passed  out  of  the  realm 
of  serious  discussion. 

To  Prof.  Clemen  and  others  the  unhistor- 
ical  character  of  the  Virgin  Birth  seems 
proved  by  Mary's  judgment  on  her  Son  in 
Mark  iii.  21,  “He  is  beside  Himself."  It  is 
understandable  that  the  friends  of  Jesus,  dis¬ 
appointed  about  His  occupying  Himself  with 
lowly  service,  troubled  at  the  excitement  cen¬ 
tering  about  Him,  astounded  at  His  clashing 
with  the  ecclesiastical  rulers,  should  have  re¬ 
solved  to  put  Him  under  restraint  as  being 
mad.  But  how  would  this  be  predicated  of 
Mary  if  she  was  treasuring  within  her  re¬ 
membrance  the  Annunciation  and  the  Mirac¬ 
ulous  Nativity?  This  objection  to  the  Virgin 
Birth  is  quite  gratuitous,  revealing  a  very 
defective  sense  of  what  is  possible  mentally. 
It  proceeds  on  the  assumption  that  the 


The  Virgin  Birth 


23 


strange  experiences  of  the  Virgin  at  the  con* 
ception  of  her  Son  would  preserve  her  from 
all  failure  in  faith  and  temper  during  thirty 
long  subsequent  years,  that  amid  the  routine 
of  her  commonplace,  day-by-day  existence 
she  lived  constantly  in  exalted  recollection  of 
the  supernatural  mode  of  her  Son's  birth,  so 
that  all  doubt  and  questioning,  and  all  ma¬ 
ternal  solicitude  or  vexation,  were  impos¬ 
sible.  The  argument  takes  no  account  of 
human  nature.  The  same  type  of  explana¬ 
tion  applies  to  Mary's  reproof  of  the  boy 
Jesus  in  the  Temple  after  the  painful  search 
which  He  had  caused  herself  and  Joseph.  It 
is  one  of  the  marks  of  the  authentic  char¬ 
acter  of  the  Gospel  narrative  that  these 
psychological  contrasts  and  seeming  incon¬ 
sistencies  are  told  fearlessly.  There  is  no 
paring  down  of  awkward  happenings  to  gain 
credence.  The  story  is  told  by  men  whose 
literary  powers  compel  us  to  credit  them  with 
as  keen  an  eye  for  incongruity  as  any  of  us 
possess.  A  plain  statement  of  fact  cannot  be 
annulled  by  an  appeal  to  consistency  in  so 
uncertain  and  shifty  a  factor  as  the  human 
mind.  The  Gospels  furnish  many  an  example 
of  the  futility  of  expecting  a  properly  cor¬ 
rect  result  to  follow  invariably  a  given  set  of 
circumstances.  John  the  Baptist,  after  see¬ 
ing  three  wonders  at  the  baptism  of  Jesus, 


24 


The  Virgin  Birth 


after  bearing  public  testimony  to  the  Lamb 
of  God,  suffered  an  eclipse  of  faith  when 
languishing  in  prison.  Peter's  confession  of 
Jesus  as  Messiah  did  not  hinder  his  violent 
remonstrance  when  Jesus  spoke  of  His  death. 
“Have  I  been  so  long  time  with  you,  and  dost 
thou  not  know  Me,  Philip?"  was  a  reproach 
— perhaps  not  unmixed  with  surprise — from 
One  Who  “knew  what  was  in  man."  In  the 
light  of  the  foregoing  the  two  episodes  in 
Mary's  life  just  now  mentioned  are  not  in¬ 
compatible  with  the  Virgin  Birth. 

Another  occasion  for  attacking  the  Virgin 
Birth  has  been  found  in  the  fact  that  in  the 
Gospels  Jesus  is  called,  without  correction, 
the  carpenter's  son,  the  son  of  Joseph,  and 
that  several  times  Joseph  and  Mary  are 
jointly  named  His  parents.  These  modes  of 
speech  are  employed  not  only  by  His  coun¬ 
trymen  and  His  disciples,  but  Luke  the 
Evangelist  speaks  three  times  of  the  parents 
of  Jesus,  and  once  Mary  herself  is  made  to 
say,  “Thy  father  and  I."  Well,  what  of  it? 
In  all  this  there  is  no  real  inconsistency  with 
the  Virgin  Birth.  The  secret  of  Jesus'  mirac¬ 
ulous  conception  was  for  long  jealously  kept 
by  Joseph  and  Mary.  It  could  not  be  divulged 
to  be  met  with  incredulity  and  mockery. 
Never  could  Mary  forget  that  dreadful  day 


The  Virgin  Birth 


25 


when  even  Joseph,  her  espoused  husband, 
had  doubted  her.  And  so,  during  His  life¬ 
time,  Jesus  was  popularly  regarded  as 
Joseph's  son  by  natural  generation,  the  son 
of  the  man  in  whose  house  He  grew  up.  This 
would  be  the  thought  of  the  immediate  fol¬ 
lowers  of  Jesus,  as  well  as  of  all  others.  The 
Gospels,  therefore,  simply  report  the  current 
belief,  simply  record  what  was  actually  said 
about  our  Lord  in  the  days  of  His  flesh,  and, 
for  very  natural  reasons,  Luke  himself 
adopted  these  common  sayings  a  few  times  in 
his  personal  narrative.  As  for  Mary's  re¬ 
mark  to  Jesus,  “Thy  father  and  I  sought 
Thee  sorrowing,"  Joseph  stood  to  Jesus  in 
Loco  parentis;  he  was  His  adoptive  father, 
and  performed  all  the  duties  of  a  father  to¬ 
wards  Him;  and  Mary  would  speak  accord¬ 
ingly.  How  else  within  the  family  could 
Joseph  be  styled  but  the  father  of  Jesus? 
The  exceptional  birth  of  Jesus  would  not  be 
talked  about  before  the  other  children,  nor 
would  Jesus  Himself  be  told  of  it  in  boyhood. 

We  come  next  to  the  fallacious  argument 
against  the  Virgin  Birth  narratives  of  Matt¬ 
hew  and  Luke  based  on  the  silence  of  Jesus 
concerning  the  mystery  of  His  birth  and  the 
silence,  or  presumed  silence,  of  the  rest  of 
the  New  Testament  on  the  subject, — the 


26 


The  Virgin  Birth 


Gospels  of  Mark  and  John,  the  Acts,  and  the 
apostolic  Epistles,  especially  those  of  Paul. 

It  is  true  that  never,  even  within  the  circle 
of  the  apostles.  His  entourage,  did  Jesus 
make  any  allusion  to  the  miracle  of  His 
origin.  We  do  not  know  when  or  how  He 
Himself  became  apprised  of  it.  Though  at 
twelve  years  of  age  He  had  the  consciousness 
that  God  was  His  Father  in  a  peculiar  way, 
this  sheds  no  light  on  the  other  question,  nor 
IS  that  question  of  any  moment  in  this  pres¬ 
ent  connection.  Regarding  the  silence  of 
Jesus,  it  is  absurd  to  say  that  this  discredits 
the  birth  stories  in  Matthew  and  Luke.  From 
the  nature  of  the  case  Jesus  could  not  but 
be  silent.  Before  His  resurrection  the  im¬ 
mature  disciples  could  not  have  grasped  the 
import  of  the  Virgin  Birth,  nor  utilized  it, 
and  He  could  scarcely  be  expected  to  broad¬ 
cast  the  matter  to  the  masses  of  the  people, 
who  remained  unbelieving  in  spite  of  the 
signs  wrought  among  them,  and  for  whom 
the  Virgin  Birth  would  have  been  just  one 
more  stumbling-block.  There  were  many 
instances  when,  in  answer  to  the  taunts  of 
the  Pharisees,  it  would  have  been  timely  for 
Him  to  have  asserted  His  supernatural  birth, 
but  what  good  would  it  have  done?  What 
effect  would  the  announcement  have  had 
upon  those  already  blinded  by  prejudice  ex- 


The  Virgin  Birth 


27 


cept  to  heighten  that  prejudice  and  place  in 
their  hands  a  weapon  which  could  be  used 
not  only  against  Jesus,  but  against  His 
household  ? 

The  silence  of  the  first  preachers  of  the 
Gospel,  revealed  in  Acts,  creates  no  problem. 
We  must  remember  that  the  intelligence  of 
the  Virgin  Birth  broke  out  cautiously.  Dur¬ 
ing  the  life  of  Jesus  there  was  absolute  reti¬ 
cence  on  His  part  and  also  on  Mary’s.  Only 
after  the  resurrection,  wherein  Jesus  was 
declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  would  Mary 
be  impelled  to  tell  the  transcendent  fact,  har¬ 
monizing  as  it  did  with  what  was  then  seen 
to  be  the  majesty  of  the  Master.  The  truth 
would  be  whispered  first  to  some  close  friend 
in  the  company  of  women  with  whom  the 
Virgin-Mother  was  familiar,  and  then  to  an¬ 
other  and  another.  Presently  the  chiefs  of 
the  apostolic  college  would  be  told, — before 
all  others  John,  in  whose  home  Mary  was 
sheltered.  It  is  very  doubtful,  however, 
whether  in  the  lifetime  of  Mary  the  Holy 
Conception  was  given  publicity.  Probably 
it  was  held  confidentially  within  a  very  lim¬ 
ited  group  so  as  to  save  Mary  from  scandal¬ 
ous  misrepresentation,  such  as  did  actually 
arise  when  at  length — perhaps  in  reply  to 
some  heresy — the  Virgin  Birth  was  made 


28 


The  Virgin  Birth 


known  through  oral  teaching  and  the  two 
narratives  of  Matthew  and  Luke.  Under 
the  circumstances  why  should  it  be  expected 
that  in  primitive  missionary  preaching  the 
Virgin  Birth  would  be  stressed  or  even  men¬ 
tioned?  And,  aside  from  prudential  reasons, 
it  was  not  within  the  field  to  which  the 
apostles  could  bear  personal  witness  and  was 
no  paid:  of  the  evidence  on  which  they  them¬ 
selves  had  believed.  Their  official  testimony 
began,  not  with  the  birth  of  Jesus,  but  with 
the  baptism  of  John  (Acts  i.  22).  Further, 
the  Virgin  Birth  was  not  in  itself  calculated 
to  appeal  to  unbelieving  Jews,  for  the  Jew¬ 
ish  Messianic  hope  included  nothing  of  this 
kind,  nor  was  it  likely  to  inspire  the  right 
sort  of  ideas  in  unbelieving  Gentiles,  who 
would  think  of  the  wonder  births  of  their 
mythologies.  What  was  urged  as  the  com¬ 
pelling  proof  of  the  supreme  claims  of  Jesus 
was  His  teaching.  His  works,  and  His  resur¬ 
rection  and  exaltation. 

If  it  be  argued  from  the  silence  of  the 
pioneer  preachers  of  Christianity  that  the 
Virgin  Birth  is  not  an  essential  doctrine, 
that  it  was  not  used  in  apostolic  days  to 
arouse  faith  in  the  Saviour  and  promote 
edification,  the  answer  is  that  it  has  not  en¬ 
tered  into  ordinary  preaching  at  any  time 


The  Virgin  Birth 


29 


since,  even  though  it  has  been  received  ex¬ 
plicitly  and  cordially.  The  presentation  of 
the  gospel  in  the  Acts  is  a  practical  treat¬ 
ment  of  saving  truth,  not  requiring  refer¬ 
ence  to  the  Virgin  Birth.  The  same  has  ever 
held.  The  Virgin  Birth  has  been  almost  un¬ 
mentioned  in  the  pulpits  of  the  Church.  Its 
value  in  doctrinal  instruction  and  confirma¬ 
tion  has  not  been  questioned,  but  commonly 
the  written  record  has  been  counted  suffi¬ 
cient.  There  has  always  been  present  the 
reserve  of  a  true  delicacy  which  has  re¬ 
frained  from  invading  this  sanctum  of  the 
faith. 

We  are  to  consider  next  the  silence  of  the 
other  New  Testament  writers.  Starting  with 
the  Second  Gospel,  the  Virgin  Birth  lay  en¬ 
tirely  outside  the  scope  of  its  design.  Mark, 
writing  for  those  of  the  Roman  habit  of 
mind,  sought  to  portray  Christ  as  the 
“Strong  Son  of  God.”  He  does  not  carry  us 
behind  the  preaching  of  John  the  Baptist, 
but  restricts  himself  to  our  Lord’s  public 
career.  His  omission  of  the  Virgin  Birth 
warrants,  therefore,  no  adverse  comment. 

In  the  case  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  several 
points  demand  attention.  This  Gospel  is 
supplemental  to  the  other  three.  Writing 
late  in  the  first  century,  John  was  address- 


80 


The  Virgin  Birth 


mg  readers  familiar  with  the  Virgin  Birth 
as  embodied  in  Matthew  and  Luke  and  as 
part  and  parcel  of  the  tradition  of  the 
Church.  Therefore  it  was  not  necessary  to 
repeat  the  story.  Secondly,  in  his  matchless 
prologue,  which  occupies  a  structural  place 
similar  to  that  of  the  genealogy  in  Matthew’s 
Gospel,  John  approaches  the  truth  of  the  In¬ 
carnation  from  the  Divine  side  purely,  from 
the  side  of  heaven,  not  of  earth.  In  his  pro¬ 
found  theological  contemplation  of  the 
Logos,  the  pre-existent  Son  of  God,  he  takes 
us  back  into  an  unmeasured  eternity  and  the 
recesses  of  the  inner  life  of  the  Godhead. 
Here  only  is  the  radical  significance  of  Christ 
laid  bare.  In  such  a  lofty  train  of  thought 
can  it  be  insisted  upon  that  a  birth-narrative 
such  as  that  in  the  two  Synoptics  must 
appear  if  John  is  to  be  rated  as  believing  it? 
In  his  book  The  Birth  and  Infancy  of  Jesus 
Christ  Dr.  Louis  M.  Sweet  has  shown  that 
nistorically  the  miraculous  birth  of  Jesus 
was  simply  an  item  in  the  larger  controversy 
with  Cerinthianism  in  which  John  was  ab¬ 
sorbed.  The  Virgin  Birth  was  not  denied 
except  as  a  fraction  of  a  larger  denial.  The 
controversy  had  to  do  with  the  reality  of  the 
Incarnation.  There  was  no  discussion  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  by  itself.  All  who  accepted  the 
Incarnation  accepted,  as  a  matter  of  course, 


The  Virgin  Birth 


31 


the  miraculous  birth.  Men  accepted  both 
together.  When,  therefore,  John  wrote  the 
sentence,  “the  Word  became  flesh,”  he 
indorsed  that  entire  organized  and  system¬ 
atic  Christology  with  which,  in  the  mind  of 
the  early  Church,  the  Virginal  Birth  was  in¬ 
separably  bound  up.  And  then  the  Evangel¬ 
ist  does  make  a  covert  allusion  to  the  Virgin 
Birth  in  his  description  of  those  to  whom  the 
Incarnate  Word  has  “given  the  right  to  be¬ 
come  children  of  God.”  They  are  spoken  of 
as  “born,  not  of  bloods,  nor  of  the  will  of  the 
flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God.”  In 
that  language  John  shuts  out  categorically 
and  elaborately  all  the  generative  factors  of 
numan  fatherhood.  This  immediately  pre¬ 
cedes  his  reference  to  the  Incarnation,  “the 
Word  became  flesh,”  and  John's  suggestion 
IS  that  the  spiritual  birth  of  God's  children 
IS  analogous  to  the  supernatural  birth  of  the 
Incarnate  Logos.  The  apostle  would  hardly 
ascribe  the  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God 
to  those  very  factors  of  natural  birth  which 
he  expressly  excludes  from  the  begetting  of 
the  children  of  God.  The  three  foregoing 
considerations  strip  the  silence  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  of  any  sinister  significance  and 
nullify  the  argument  based  thereon.  It  may 
be  noted  here  that  there  is  a  remarkable 
reading  in  one  copy  of  the  Old  Latin  (b.  Cod. 


The  Virgin  Birth 


32 


V'eron.),  where,  after  John  has  spoken  of 
'‘believing  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ,”  he 
proceeds,  “Who  was  born,”  etc.  This  reading 
in  the  singular  number  was  known  to  Justin, 
Irenaeus,  Tertullian,  and  perhaps  Hippoly- 
tus.  With  this  reading  there  would  be  a 
direct  reference  to  Christ’s  supernatural 
birth.  But,  though  favored  by  Blass,  Loisy, 
and  Resch,  it  is  undoubtedly  wrong. 

Coming  to  the  New  Testament  Epistles, 
it  is  well  known  that  they  were  produced  in 
response  to  special  occasion  and  that  their 
writers  are  occupied  in  solving  practical 
problems  and  contending  for  Christian  prin¬ 
ciples,  not  in  recalling  historical  details  of 
our  Lord’s  life.  That  being  the  case,  no  proof 
of  their  ignorance  of  the  Virgin  Birth,  or  of 
their  disbelief  in  it,  can  be  drawn  from  their 
silence.  It  simply  does  not  come  within  the 
range  of  their  purpose.  Singling  out  Paul,  it 
can  be  urged  with  great  force  that  there  is 
an  antecedent  certainty  of  his  knowledge  of 
the  Virgin  Birth  through  his  intimacy  with 
Luke,  who  was  his  companion  and  disciple. 
While  nowhere  in  his  extant  letters  does  the 
apostle  speak  formally  of  the  Virgin  Birth, 
it  may  be  fairly  maintained  that  he  makes 
statements  whic^are  consistent  with,  if  not 
dependent  upon,  his  acceptance  of  it.  Dr. 


The  Virgin  Birth 


83 


H.  B.  Swete  contends  that  the  Virgin  Birth  ' 
lies  in  the  background  of  Paul’s  doctrine  of 
“the  last  Adam”  and  “the  second  man”  (I 
Cor.  XV.  45,  47).  Also  in  Gal.  iv.  4  the  ex¬ 
pression  “born  of  a  woman,”  literally  “hav¬ 
ing  become  out  of  a  woman,”  is  in  excellent 
accord  with  the  miraculous  conception  of 
Jesus.  What  point  would  there  be  in  em¬ 
phasizing  the  birth  of  Jesus  from  a  woman 
unless  there  was  something  singular  about 
the  woman’s  agency  in  the  matter?  If  the 
birth  were  in  the  line  of  nature,  the  words 
would  appear  to  be  redundant.  The  phrase 
is  not  conclusive,  but  suggestive. 

After  this  brief  examination  into  the 
silence  of  the  New  Testament  writers  re¬ 
garding  the  Virgin  Birth,  it  is  evident  that 
adverse  conclusions  therefrom  are  gratui¬ 
tous.  This  may  be  illustrated  by  a  quotation 
from  the  editor  of  The  British  Weekly :  “We 
have  taken  quite  at  random  two  volumes  of 
sermons,  one  by  Dr.  Parker  and  the  other 
by  Mr.  Spurgeon.  It  can  be  proved  very 
easily  that  these  eminent  preachers  fully 
accepted  the  fact  of  the  Virgin  Birth,  but  in 
the  books  we  have  examined  we  have  not 
found  any  reference  to  the  Virgin  Birth.  Dr. 
Parker’s  volume  commences  with  a  discourse 
on  Worshiping  Christ,  which  was  preached 


34 


The  Virgin  Birth 


at  Christmas,  but  he  does  not  say  that  Christ 
was  born  of  a  virgin.  Suppose  no  other  writ¬ 
ings  of  Dr.  Parker  and  Mr.  Spurgeon  had 
come  down  to  us,  would  it  have  been  fair 
to  argue  that  they  did  not  know  of,  or  that 
they  did  not  believe  in,  the  Virgin  Birth?'' 
Mere  silence,  if  it  can  be  satisfactorily  ac¬ 
counted  for,  does  not  prove  either  lack  of 
knowledge  or  denial ;  and  indirect  indications 
may  often  be  shown  to  be  present,  when 
direct  testimony  is  wanting.  Had  the  writers 
of  the  New  Testament  used  expressions  in¬ 
consistent  with  the  Virgin  Birth,  it  would 
be  a  very  serious  matter ;  but  there  are  none 
such. 

There  are  those  who  take  the  stand  that 
Christ's  Davidic  descent  annuls  the  Virgin 
Birth,  that  this  descent  hinges  on  the  real 
fatherhood  of  Joseph.  The  answer  is  that 
from  the  earliest  period  the  testimony  of  the 
Church  has  been  that  Mary,  as  well  as 
Joseph,  was  of  David's  family.  This  was 
something  about  which  the  apostles  and 
early  Christians  could  not  well  have  been 
Ignorant.  If  not  founded  in  fact,  it  is  diffi¬ 
cult  to  see  how  such  a  belief  could  have  be¬ 
come  prevalent.  Besides,  there  is  substantial 
cause  for  holding  that  Luke  gives  the  actual 
genealogy  of  Jesus  through  His  mother.  This 


35 


The  Virgin  Birth 


is  maintained  by  Andrews,  Ellicott,  Godet, 
Lange,  Plumptre,  Robertson,  Weiss,  Wies- 
eler,  and  many  others. 

^  In  the  argument  for  the  historicity  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  the  verisimilitude,  the  prima 
facie  truthfulness,  of  the  birth-story  as  it 
gathers  about  Mary  in  Luke’s  narrative  de¬ 
serves  mention.  Dr.  James  Orr  has  put  this 
finely:  “In  these  chapters  we  seem  looking 
through  a  glass  into  Mary’s  very  heart.  Her 
purity  of  soul,  her  delicate  reserve,  her  in¬ 
spired  exaltation,  her  patient  committing  of 
herself  into  God’s  hands  to  vindicate  her 
honor,  her  deep,  brooding,  thoughtful  spirit 
— how  truth-like  and  worthy  of  the  fact  is 
the  whole  picture.” 

Crowning  all  that  has  been  said,  the  mirac¬ 
ulous  birth  of  Jesus  so  tallies  with  the  other 
facts  of  record  that  together  they  form  a 
seamless,  complete,  and  consistent  whole. 
Passing  the  absolutely  unprecedented  life  of 
the  Master  and  His  unapproachable  traits, 
take  His  resurrection.  Supernatural  birth  is 
a  most  credible  and  befitting  preface  to  a  life 
consummated  by  rising  from  the  dead ;  noth¬ 
ing  could  be  more  intrinsically  congruous.  As 
in  the  resurrection  the  career  of  Jesus  re¬ 
ceived  its  appropriate  finale,  so  in  the  Virgin 


36 


The  Virgin  Birth 


Birth  that  career  had  its  appropriate  pre- 
inde. 

Additional  to  what  is  Scriptural,  it  should 
be  noted  that  the  Virgin  Birth  belongs  to 
that  essential,  permanent  Christianity  which 
IS  truly  Catholic.  It  had  a  prominent  place 
in  the  earliest  traditions  of  the  Church, 
reaching  back  to  the  very  confines  of  the 
apostolic  age.  From  the  beginning  of  the 
second  century  on  there  was  a  consensus  of 
belief  on  this  subject  among  all  the  wide¬ 
spread  and  independent  branches  of  the 
Christian  Church.  Evidence  thereto  appears 
in  the  epistles  of  Ignatius  (who  suffered 
martyrdom  about  A.  D.  110) ,  in  the  apologies 
of  Aristides  and  Justin,  and  in  the  writings 
of  Irenaeus  (the  disciple  of  Polycarp),  Ter- 
tullian,  Clement,  and  Origen.  All  this  leads 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  Virgin  Birth  came 
forward,  at  its  first  publication,  with  the 
highest  possible  credentials.  Subsequently 
it  was  enshrined  in  the  Old  Roman  Symbol, 
was  written  into  the  other  Ecumenical 
Creeds,  and  was  transferred  thence  into  the 
Confessions  of  modern  Christendom.  His¬ 
torically,  therefore,  it  satisfies  to  the  full  the 
Vincentian  canon  concerning  a  valid  tradi¬ 
tion:  '‘quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  ab 


The  Virgin  Birth 


37 


omnibus” — whatever  has  been  believed  al¬ 
ways,  and  everywhere,  and  by  everybody. 

This  is  the  end  of  the  matter.  The  Virgin 
Birth  of  Jesus  is  overwhelmingly  attested. 
The  negative  critics  are  biased  by  their  phil¬ 
osophical  postulate  of  naturalism,  and  they 
are  in  a  state  of  internecine  conflict  with  one 
another.  With  Luke^s  personal  guarantee  of 
“certainty’',  and  all  the  reinforcing  consider¬ 
ations  that  accompany  that  guarantee,  our 
attitude  to  the  Virgin  Birth  should  be  that 
of  full  assurance.  It  is  a  constituent  of  the 
truth  concerning  which  the  apostle  John 
wrote:  “It  shall  be  with  us  forever.” 

It  may  be  stated  incidentally  that  in  the 
support  of  the  Virgin  Birth  the  citation  of 
parthenogenesis  (virgin-reproduction),  or 
agamogenesis,  is  utterly  irrelevant.  Granted 
that  in  some  of  the  lower  orders  of  the  bio¬ 
logical  series  there  is  asexual  reproduction, 
reproduction  by  means  of  unfertilized  eggs, 
what  has  this  to  do  with  the  Virgin  Birth? 
The  conception  of  Jesus  was  by  the  power 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  not  by  any  kind  of 
parthenogenesis  in  the  scientific  sense,  was 
definitely  a  miracle,  and  not  a  natural 
anomaly.  It  was  the  Lord’s  doing,  not 
Nature’s.  A  number  of  conservative  writ- 


38 


The  Virgin  Birth 


ers,  driven  by  apologetic  zeal,  limp  at  this 
point. 

It  is  now  in  order  to  consider  briefly  why 
there  was  in  the  case  of  Jesus  such  deviation 
from  the  law  of  natural  birth.  There  are 
many  who  believe  that  the  Miraculous  Con¬ 
ception  was  a  necessary  condition  of  the  In¬ 
carnation,  that  only  thus  could  One  Who  be¬ 
came  the  God-man  be  born  into  the  world. 
The  only-begotten  Son  of  God  became  flesh 
m  such  a  manner  as  to  secure  that  there 
would  be  nothing  in  His  manhood  destructive 
of  His  continued  filial  relation  to  God.  Had 
He  been  born  after  the  ordinary  manner, 
from  two  human  parents.  He  could  never 
nave  been  God  incarnate;  His  personality 
would  have  been  a  human  personality,  even 
though  inhabited  by  the  Son  of  God.  All  this 
reasoning  is  finespun  and  hazardous.  A  little 
thought  must  convince  us  that  we  are  not 
able  to  dogmatize  as  to  what  was  necessary 
or  possible  in  an  event  so  sheerly  unique  as 
the  Incarnation.  In  spite  of  His  miraculous 
conception  Jesus  had  a  complete,  not  a  par¬ 
tial,  humanity,  a  normal,  not  an  abnormal, 
humanity.  He  took  to  Himself  of  His  Vir¬ 
gin-Mother  all  that  belonged  to  the  truth  of 
manhood.  He  was  “made  like  unto  His 
brethren”  just  the  same  as  if  Joseph  had 


The  Virgin  Birth 


39 


been  His  actual  father.  Further,  the  doc¬ 
trine  just  reviewed  does  not  agree  with  the 
fact  that  neither  John  nor  Paul  ever  based 
the  Incarnation  on  the  Virgin  Birth  as  its 
sine  qua  non. 

There  are  others  who  explain  that  the 
Virgin  Birth  was  required  in  order  to  sep¬ 
arate  Christ’s  humanity  from  the  entail  of 
sinfulness  which  is  the  universal  inheritance 
of  our  race  from  Adam.  Ordinary  genera¬ 
tion  could  not  have  issued  in  anything  else 
than  a  morally  contaminated,  tainted  person¬ 
ality.  By  the  elimination  of  the  paternal 
factor,  by  miraculous  conception,  by  virgin 
birth,  Jesus  escaped  all  inherited  tendency 
to  sin ;  the  fatal  link  of  heredity  was  broken. 
In  proof  of  this  the  angel’s  annunciation  is 
cited — “the  holy  thing  which  is  begotten.” 
From  this  we  dissent.  There  is  no  satisfac¬ 
tion  whatever  in  making  the  Virgin  Birth  a 
necessary  presupposition  of  the  sinless  char¬ 
acter  of  Jesus.  To  bring  physiology  over  into 
dogma,  to  make  the  original  holiness  of  Jesus 
depend  on  a  physical,  material  miracle,  is  a 
more  than  doubtful  proceeding.  After  all, 
the  human  factor  in  the  birth  of  Jesus  was 
only  halved,  not  abolished.  The  influence  of 
the  father  upon  the  child  is  slight  compared 
with  the  sovereign  influence  of  the  mother 


40 


The  Virgin  Birth 


during  the  period  of  gestation.  Unless  the 
Roman  Catholic  decree  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  of  Mary  is  accepted,  the  Maiden 
Mother  was  subject  to  original  depravity  and 
indwelling  sin.  In  her  maternal  function, 
therefore,  she  must  have  contributed  of  her 
sinful  nature  to  Jesus  had  not  the  dynamic 
and  ethical  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  inter¬ 
vened.  That  being  so,  the  cleansing  power 
of  God  could  have  barred  the  transmission 
of  sinful  propensity  just  as  well  had  the 
paternity  of  Joseph  been  involved.  Under 
God’s  sexual  ordinance  why  should  father¬ 
hood,  more  than  motherhood,  have  so  threat¬ 
ened  the  spotless  sanctity  of  Jesus  that  a 
virgin  conception  was  the  only  safeguard? 
Then  there  is  no  New  Testament  passage 
that  suggests  in  any  exclusive  way  a  causal 
connection  between  the  miraculous  birth  of 
Jesus  and  His  immaculate  holiness.  Indeed 
Paul  does  not  even  mention  such  a  connec¬ 
tion.  He  is  the  only  New  Testament  writer 
who  developed  the  doctrine  of  original  de¬ 
pravity  inherited  by  the  race  through 
Adam’s  fall,  and  he  never  felt  it  necessary 
to  trace  the  sinlessness  of  Christ  to  His  ex¬ 
emption  from  the  law  of  ordinary  genera¬ 
tion.  In  Luke’s  Annunciation  story  it  is 
practically  certain  that  the  phrase  '‘the  holy 
thing”  is  not  in  the  predicate  of  the  clause. 


The  Virgin  Birth 


41 


See  the  American  Standard  text  and  margin. 
If  it  is  not  in  the  predicate,  it  has  no  special 
emphasis.  Waiving  this,  while  the  ‘‘over¬ 
shadowing  of  the  Most  High’’  had  as  its 
necessary  sequence  “the  holy  thing  which  is 
begotten”  (“wherefore  also”),  it  is  not  at  all 
indicated  that  the  method  followed  was  of 
such  an  absolute  type  that  holiness  was 
bound  up  with  a  virgin  birth  as  against  a 
normal  birth  conditioned  and  guarded  by  the 
controlling  power  of  God. 

Dismissing  the  foregoing  interpretations 
of  the  Virgin  Birth,  it  is  fully  justified  as  the 
signal  of  Incarnation.  “It  became  Him” 
Who  was  in  the  beginning  with  God  that 
His  entry  into  the  world  should  be  marked 
by  miracle.  Weigh  the  tremendous,  the 
ineffable,  the  infinite  significance  of  the  In¬ 
carnation — the  most  transcendent  of  all 
events  even  when  the  possibilities  of  the 
measureless  future  are  taken  into  account. 
The  Eternal  Son  of  God,  rooted  in  the  very 
constitution  of  the  Godhead,  by  Whom  all 
things  were  made,  “came  down  from  heaven” 
to  be  the  Mediator  between  God  and  man,  to 
be  the  Revealer  of  God  and  the  Redeemer  of 
sinners.  In  pursuance  of  His  mission  He 
united  Himself  to  us  by  “partaking  of  flesh 
and  blood.”  If  miracle  was  ever  in  place  as 


42 


The  Virgin  Birth 


manifesting  the  “finger  of  God/’  was  there 
not  an  exquisite  fitness,  an  inherent  fitness, 
in  the  providential  ordering  that  the  Advent 
of  the  Son  of  God  should  be  signalized  within 
itself  by  the  extraordinary?  To  have  had 
the  Incarnation  actualized  by  ordinary 
parentage  would  have  been  as  unreasonable 
as  to  have  the  sun  rise  without  declaring 
itself  in  light  and  heat.  The  moment  of  con¬ 
ception  was  the  moment  of  the  Incarnation, 
and  just  there  the  unique  miracle  of  the  Vir¬ 
gin  Birth  entered  and  a  Divine  paternity  was 
substituted  for  a  human.  While  through 
Mary  Jesus  was  vitally  incorporated  with 
our  race  and,  without  sin,  inherited  our  en¬ 
tire  humanity.  He  had  a  paternity  befitting 
a  life  indwelt  with  all  the  fulness  of  the  God¬ 
head.  Surveying  the  breadth  and  length  and 
height  and  depth  of  the  Incarnation,  must 
we  not  say  that  it  would  have  been  unnatural 
if  the  birth  of  the  Saviour  had  been  natural  ? 

And  now  a  concluding  word  about  the  im¬ 
portance  of  affirming  the  doctrine  of  the 
Virgin  Birth.  It  is  urged  that,  like  the 
earliest  Christians,  we  too  can  acknowledge 
the  Deity  of  Christ,  and  therefore  the  Incar¬ 
nation,  independently  of  the  manner  of  His 
human  birth.  The  answer  is  not  difficult. 
The  conditions  under  which  we  own  our 


The  Virgin  Birth 


43 


Lord’s  claims  are  not  the  same  as  those  of 
primitive  days.  The  fact  of  the  Virgin 
Birth,  then  unknown,  was  disclosed  when  the 
fulness  of  the  time  came,  and  centuries  of 
reflection  and  criticism  have  elapsed.  As 
soon  as  it  was  published,  the  Virgin  Birth 
was  recognized,  formally  and  officially  recog¬ 
nized,  as  a  befitting  and  convincing  sign  of 
the  entrance  of  the  Son  of  God  into  human¬ 
ity.  It  was  seen  that  it  stood  related  to  the 
Incarnation  as  a  key  to  its  lock.  For  this 
reason  it  has  been  felt,  and  rightly,  that  to 
reject  such  a  sign  must  weaken  belief  in  the 
Incarnation’.  This  is  borne  out  by  the  fact 
that  those  who  refuse  to  accept  the  Virgin 
Birth  have,  as  a  rule,  fallen  short  of  a  proper 
acknowledghient  of  the  sacred  mystery  with 
which  it  is  tied  up.  Theoretically  it  is 
granted  that  a  man  may  doubt  or  deny  the 
Virgin  Birth  without,  in  his  own  mind,  deny¬ 
ing  the  Incarnation  or  the  Deity  of  Christ. 
And  yet  he  has  hoodwinked  himself.  He  has 
taken  a  position  which  he  cannot  long  main¬ 
tain.  The  Deity  of  Christ  and  the  Incarna¬ 
tion  are  woven  together  with  the  Virgin 
Birth,  so  that  none  can  successfully  main¬ 
tain  any  one  of  them  without  maintaining 
all.  This  is  the  lesson  which  history  teaches. 
In  recent  years  it  has  become  increasingly 
evident.  Those  in  the  Christian  ranks  who 


44 


The  Virgin  Birth 


disbelieve  the  Virgin  Birth  are  in  other  re¬ 
spects  also  adherents  of  the  New  Theology. 
They  mostly  doubt  or  deny  the  physical 
resurrection  of  Jesus  and  they  define  the  In¬ 
carnation  and  the  Deity  of  our  Lord  in  a 
different  way  from  that  of  the  Creeds,  in  a 
false  and  deceptive  way.  Furthermore,  the 
discrediting  on  speculative,  and  Conjectural 
grounds  of  the  well-established  testimony  of 
the  First  and  Third  Gospels  regarding  the 
Virgin  Birth  is  itself  a  perilous  proceeding 
in  that  it  involves  unfaithfulness  to  the  fun¬ 
damental  principle  of  the  supreme  objective 
authority  of  the  Scriptures.  The  step  is  big 
with  consequences  as  a  rationalistic  depar¬ 
ture  from  what  is  clearly  written,  pointing 
the  way  to  the  acceptance  of  only  those 
Biblical  teachings  and  affirmations  that 
accord  with  personal  presuppositions. 

In  the  light  of  the  foregoing  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  Church  to  contend  earnestly  for  this 
article,  as  for  every  other  article,  of  the 
Faith  which  was  once  for  all  delivered  unto 
the  saints. 


BS2423.1.M16 
The  virgin  birth, 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1  1012  00013  2573 


